Electric Bath [Original recording remastered]

Don Ellis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 18, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Columbia/Legacy/Sony
• ASIN: B000009RC0
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,356 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: ELLIS,DON
Title: ELECTRIC BATH
Street Release Date: 08/18/1998
Domestic
Genre: JAZZ

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, Clean Fun, July 17, 2006

By 

El Lagarto (Sandown, NH) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Electric Bath (Audio CD)

When trumpeter-composer-arranger-bandleader Don Ellis and his 21-piece assault force stepped on stage at the '65 Monterey Jazz Festival, they dragged the big band format into the modern era. The golden age of big bands, roughly framed by World War II, was well over. Duke Ellington and Count Basie, though active, were simply refining a style perfected years before.

Young Turks like Buddy Rich and Maynard Ferguson, with whom Ellis apprenticed, reinvigorated the format but did not reinvent it. Their modernized spin on big band jazz will forever be defined, sadly, by the unmistakably slick, processed delivery of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show orchestra. Outside the walls there was a musical revolution going on; Ellis and crew were first to hit the street and help storm the barricades.

Electric Bath, recorded in 1967, showcased a relentless creativity which, when combined with precision playing and unbelievable energy levels, delivered something totally new - and wild. The Ellis Orchestra fused rock with jazz, boasted truly bizarre and technically dazzling time signatures, introduced exotic musical influences that added an otherworldly quality, and played with joyful exuberance. Ellis could show off with the best of them, using a four-valve trumpet to split notes into quartertones, bending and teasing with the panache of a rock guitarist.

The Don Ellis Orchestra was masterful at making the most of dynamics; they went from poignant, soft, and gentle to hurricane velocity with effortless ease. As a bandleader, Ellis was exacting, he had to be, when you've got 21 guys playing in 19/4 time there's little margin for error. In this regard, Ellis was a marvelous anomaly; he combined the fearless experimentation of the late 60's with a rigorous discipline conspicuously absent from most of what was in the air back then.

Discovering a more scintillating, groundbreaking CD than Electric Bath by The Don Ellis Orchestra is certainly possible, but far from easy. It is perhaps a notch below Tears Of Joy, the DEO 2-CD masterwork. But comparing the two is rather like asking which is the better Vermeer, View Of Delft or Girl With A Pearl Earring? Once you've hit that level of quality, who cares?

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before His Time...And Then Some, June 23, 2000

By 

Arthur R Breyfogle (Sin City / Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Electric Bath (Audio CD)

Back in the late 60's I toiled as a youth at an FM station (nobody listened to FM back then children) and played all kinds of music...Sandwiched in between the Carpenters and Andy Williams we would slid in some jazz cuts...(Even the owners were not tuned in)...I was intrigued by the cover of a Columbia lp, Electric Bath by Don Ellis...Not knowing what was in store for my ears, I plopped it on the turntable and fired it up in the cue mode...Damn, it knocked my brain cells for a loop and made my toes curl...Here was something truly different and mighty special..Open Beauty...Turkish Bath...New Horizons...Indian Lady...Time meters I had never heard...Harmonies that were new...Don Ellis was at his top form when he recorded this album back in '68...You listen and you'll be hooked...If you've never heard Mr. Ellis and you like good jazz and big bands, give Electric Bath some room on your shelf...This needs to be in your collection...I know you'll experience what I felt way, way back in a time nearly forgotten...Don Ellis...An American musical genius...But we knew that back then...Enjoy!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don Ellis deserves a wider re-release!, October 22, 1999

By 

Carson Durant "Control-Z" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Electric Bath (Audio CD)

I was fortunate enough to see Don Ellis and band twice(!) during the early 'seventies at the Everett Civic Auditorium (Everett, WA) just after the release of the "Live at Fillmore" double album set. It turned me inside-out, even to this day. Almost weekly I check to see if the "Fillmore" album has FINALLY been released on CD, but so far no go. Until then I have snatched up every Don Ellis CD I can find, including the fanatstic Electric Bath. Those who 'know' Don Ellis are nothing short of Chosen People. Please, please: more Don Ellis releases!